Richard Whittall:

The Globalist's Top Ten Books in 2016: The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Middle East Eye: "

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer is one of the weightiest, most revelatory, original and important books written about sport"

“The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer has helped me immensely with great information and perspective.”

Bob Bradley, former US and Egyptian national coach: "James Dorsey’s The Turbulent World of Middle Eastern Soccer (has) become a reference point for those seeking the latest information as well as looking at the broader picture."

Alon Raab in The International Journal of the History of Sport: “Dorsey’s blog is a goldmine of information.”

Play the Game: "Your expertise is clearly superior when it comes to Middle Eastern soccer."

Andrew Das, The New York Times soccer blog Goal: "No one is better at this kind of work than James Dorsey"

David Zirin, Sports Illustrated: "Essential Reading"

Change FIFA: "A fantastic new blog'

Richard Whitall of A More Splendid Life:

"James combines his intimate knowledge of the region with a great passion for soccer"

Christopher Ahl, Play the Game: "An excellent Middle East Football blog"

James Corbett, Inside World Football

Friday, September 30, 2016

RSIS
Commentary is a platform to provide timely and, where appropriate,
policy-relevant commentary and analysis of topical issues and contemporary
developments. The views of the authors are their own and do not represent the
official position of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU.
These commentaries may be reproduced electronically or in print with prior
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Editor RSIS Commentary, Yang Razali Kassim.

No.
241/2016 dated 30 September 2016Fighting
for the Soul of Islam:A Battle of the Paymasters

By
James M. Dorsey

Synopsis

A gathering of prominent Sunni Muslim leaders in the Chechen capital of Grozny
that appeared to have effectively excommunicated Saudi-backed
ultra-conservatism potentially opens not only a theological but also a
geopolitical rift in the Muslim world. The conference, sponsored and attended
by some of Saudi Arabia’s closest allies, suggests that Saudi funding of
ultra-conservative worldviews may be meeting its match in more liberal
interpretations of Islam backed by the United Arab Emirates and Russia.Commentary

CHECHEN STRONGMAN Ramzan Kadyrov, an Islamist with close ties to Russian
President Vladimir Putin, recently convened some of Islam’s most prominent
leaders to determine the theologically and politically explosive question of
who is a Sunni Muslim. Professing to be a Sufi, a more mystical interpretation
of Islam, Kadyrov lacks the religious credentials beyond his native Chechnya
where he was recently re-elected with 98 percent of the vote.

Kadyrov’s ability to bring together an illustrious group of Muslim scholars
highlights successful behind-the-scenes manoeuvring by the United Arab Emirates
to counter Salafism despite the UAE’s close collaboration with Saudi Arabia as
a member of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and in the war in
Yemen. It also shines a light on Russian efforts to cultivate Muslim religious
leaders.A Frontal Assault

In a frontal assault on Saudi-backed ultra-conservative movements such as Wahhabism,
Salafism and Deobandism, the conference charged that the label Sunni had been
hijacked by heretics whose deviant practices distorted Islam. In defining Sunni
Islam, the conference explicitly excluded Wahhabism, the Saudi state’s adopted
version of Islam, as well as Salafism and Deobandism from its definition. The
assault is all the more significant given that Saudi Arabia has over the last
four decades invested tens of billions of dollars into promoting globally
ultra-conservative interpretations of Islam.

The conference suggests that the UAE, together with Russia, is succeeding in
countering the Saudi effort that has enabled ultra-conservatism to make
significant inroads into Muslim communities across the globe. The heavy
Egyptian presence suggests further that the UAE, which together with Saudi
Arabia is Egypt’s foremost financier, has effectively driven a wedge between
the kingdom and the Arab world’s most populous state.

It also serves as evidence that Russian efforts to woo mainstream Muslim as
well as Islamist leaders have begun to pay off despite Moscow’s support of the
Assad regime in Syria. In a political fete, Russia managed to gather four years
ago leaders of a host of Islamist stripes, including Saudi-backed Salafists,
Muslim Brothers and Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah at one table. Russian officials
have stressed that conservative Russian Orthodox values are similar if not
identical to puritan Islamic ones.

Deep-seated Aversion

The Grozny conference was co-organised by the Tabah Foundation, the sponsor of
the Senior Scholars Council, a group that aims to recapture Islamic discourse
that many non-Salafis assert has been hijacked by Saudi largesse. The Council
was also created to counter the Doha-based International Union of Muslim
Scholars, headed by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, widely viewed as a spiritual leader
of the Muslim Brotherhood.

UAE backing for anti-Salafi initiatives and opposition to the Brotherhood, even
though it does not adhere to Salafi ideology, is rooted in Prince Mohammed’s
deep-seated aversion to political Islam. The crown prince is credited with
having persuaded the late Saudi King Abdullah to ban the Brotherhood as a
terrorist organisation.

Prince Mohammed has been troubled by suggestions that King Salman since
acceding to the throne may be less strident in his opposition to the
Brotherhood. Mohammed also differs with King Salman’s son, Deputy Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman, on the conduct of the war in Yemen and tacit cooperation
on the ground in Yemen with groups associated with Al Qaeda.

The participation in Grozny of Egypt’s Sheikh El-Tayeb suggests that
substantial Saudi funding of large numbers of Al Azhar’s scholars as well as
the kingdom’s multi-billion dollar backing of Al Sisi since his toppling in a
military coup in 2013 of Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brother and Egypt’s first and
only democratically elected leader, has not bought the kingdom the kind of
religious and political loyalty it expected.

Our Brothers?

A prominent Islamic legal scholar, who rejected a nomination for Saudi Arabia’s
prestigious King Faisal International Prize, recalls El-Tayeb effusively
thanking the kingdom during panels in recent years for its numerous donations
to Al Azhar. Al Azhar scholars were said to have competed “frantically” for sabbaticals
in the kingdom that could last anywhere from one to 20 years, paid
substantially better, and raised a scholar’s status.

“Many of my friends and family praise Abdul Wahab in their writing,” the
scholar said referring to Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, the 18th century
religious leader whose puritan interpretation of Islam became the basis for the
power sharing agreement between the ruling Al Saud family and the country’s
religious establishment. “They shrug their shoulders when I ask them privately
if they are serious… When I asked El-Tayeb why Al Azhar was not seeing changes
and avoidance of dogma, he said: ‘my hands are tied.’

To illustrate Saudi inroads, the scholar recalled being present when several
years ago Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, a former grand mufti and predecessor of
El-Tayeb as imam of the Al Azhar mosque, was interviewed about Saudi funding.
“What’s wrong with that?” the scholar recalls Tantawy as saying. Irritated by
the question, he pulled a check for US$100,000 from a drawer and slapped it
against his forehead. “Alhamdulillah (Praise be to God), they are our
brothers,” the scholar quoted Tantawy as saying.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and
co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, Germany.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused world soccer body FIFA
of allowing FIFA-sanctioned matches to be played on occupied land in the West
Bank in violation of FIFA rules and has demanded that the group ensure that
future games be staged within the borders of Israel prior to the 1967 Middle
East war.

The HRW allegations bring to the forefront longstanding
similar assertions by the Palestine Football Association (PFA) that Israel is
illegally allowing teams from Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land to
play in Israeli leagues. Palestinian efforts to get Israel sanctioned faded
into the background after the Palestine Football Association (PFA) last year
failed to muster sufficient votes to suspend the Israel Football Association’s
(IFA) FIFA membership.

HRW released its report in advance of a FIFA meeting
scheduled for October in which the group is expected to discuss barring Israeli
soccer clubs from playing in the West Bank. The Israel Football Association has
complained that Tokyo Sexwale, the head of a FIFA committee established to deal
with Israeli-Palestinian soccer issues, would be presenting his report without
giving the IFA an opportunity to review it.

HRW’s demand that Israeli West Bank teams play in Israel
proper potentially muddles issues involving the legitimacy of the settlements
and the occupation. By demanding that West Bank settlement teams play on
pitches in pre-1967 Israeli territory, HRW effectively accepts Israeli
settlement policy.

The demand further leaves Israeli military policy that restricts
Palestinian access to Israeli settlements unchallenged. HRW may have been
better served by demanding that Israeli settlement teams be barred from
competition in Israeli leagues and be included in Palestinian ones. Such a
demand would have clearly differentiated between Israel proper and the West
Bank, put pressure on Israel’s military to reverse discriminatory policies, and
put the PFA on the spot in terms of including settlement teams.

PFA President Jibril Rajoub unsuccessfully tried to persuade
FIFA at its congress in Mexico in May to ban Israel from allowing teams from Israeli
settlements to play in Israeli leagues. Mr. Jibril identified five settlement
teams competing in Israel: Beitar Givat Ze’ev, Beitar Ironi Ariel, Ironi
Yehuda, Beitar Ironi Ma’aleh Adumim and Hapoel Bik’at Hayarden. Sixty-six
members of the European parliament this month backed the PFA demand in an open
letter to FIFA.

The PFA and IFA’s position reflect the views of their
respective governments. Palestine, supported by a majority in the international
community views the West Bank as territory occupied by Israel for the past 49
years since it was conquered during the 1967 war. The IFA justifies
participation of settlement teams in its leagues on the ground that the West
Bank is disputed territory whose future has yet to be determined.

The HRW campaign against the Israeli settlement teams came
as Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations General
Assembly earlier this month that he would put forward a Security Council resolution
that would condemn the Israeli outposts. Without mentioning the United States
by name, Mr. Abbas called on Washington not to veto the resolution.

US President Barak Obama reportedly raised with Israeli
Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu on the side lines of the General Assembly
“profound US concerns about the corrosive effect that that (settlements) is
having on the prospects of two states.” Settlements are expected to feature
prominently in a framework for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks Mr. Obama may
put forward before leaving office in January. Israel has increased the
construction of settlements by 40 percent this year compared to last year.

The battle between Israel and Palestine in FIFA is a
forerunner of likely similar confrontations in multiple international
organizations as Palestine seeks to force Israel to halt its settlement
activity before engaging in any new negotiations to end the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.

FIFA was the first international organization to accept
Palestine as a member without it being an internationally recognized state.
Growing international unease, including in the United States, Israel’s foremost
ally, has however paved the way for Palestine to build on the FIFA example and apply
to a host of UN organizations, including the International Criminal Court, as a
member state.

HRW Israel and Palestine Authority director Sari Bashi argued
that FIFA in the wake of adopting a human rights policy earlier this year, was
not applying to Israel its rules and past practices in similar situations such
as Crimea, Nagorno Karabakh and the self-declared northern Cypriot state.

European soccer body UEFA in 2014 rejected the move of
Crimean clubs from Ukrainian to Russian leagues following Russia’s occupation
of the territory. UEFA said Crimea would be considered a "special zone for
football purposes" until the conflict has been resolved.

Similarly, FIFA has refused to recognize Northern Cyprus
which unilaterally declared itself independent following a 1974 Turkish
invasion or the predominantly Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh that is part
of Azerbaijan but occupied by Armenia. The denial of recognition meant that
teams from the two territories are barred from FIFA competitions and not
allowed to participate in leagues of the occupying nation.

A report commissioned by FIFA and written by Harvard
professor John Ruggie, the author of the United Nations Guiding Principles on
Business and Human Rights (UNGP), which outline the human rights
responsibilities of businesses, advised the soccer body to adhere to the
principles.

The HRW report asserts on the basis of the fact that both
Israel and Palestine are members of FIFA that “by allowing the IFA to hold
matches inside settlements, FIFA is engaging in business activity that supports
Israeli settlements, contrary to the human rights commitments it recently
affirmed.”

HRW said that “doing business in the settlements is inconsistent
with these commitments.” It said that “settlement football clubs provide
part-time employment and recreational services to settlers, making the
settlements more sustainable, thus propping up a system that exists through
serious human rights violations… The clubs provide services to Israelis but do
not and cannot provide them to Palestinians, who are not allowed to enter
settlements except as labourers bearing special permits. Because of this,
football teams, for example, operating in the settlements, are available to
Israelis only, and West Bank Palestinians may not participate, play on the
teams or even attend games as spectators.”

The report noted that in the case of sports club Givat
Ze’ev, “the IFA, and therefore FIFA as well, are holding matches on a playing
field that was rendered off-limits to its Palestinian owners, two families from
neighbouring Beitunia who were unable to access their land after Israel built
the settlement in 1977 and prevented Palestinians from entering it. The
Palestinian town of Beitunia has lost most of its agricultural land because of
Israeli military orders barring access and physical barriers.”

The issue of soccer teams from Israeli settlements on the
West Bank has been gaining traction in recent months. A petition organized by
advocacy group Avaaz and signed by 150,000 people demanded that Mr. Sexwale “uphold
FIFA’s own rules and provide fair recommendations to evict Israeli settlement
teams from FIFA. There should be zero tolerance for the six teams that
flagrantly ignore international law and operate in occupied territory.
Settlement football teams legitimise the illegal occupation and condones the
suffering the Palestinians face as a result,” the petition said.

In comments to HRW on the report, Shay Bernthal, chairman of
the Ariel Football Club, a West Bank settlement team, insisted that the clubs
were not discriminatory or racist. While HRW was referring to West Bank
Palestinians in its assertions of discrimination, Mr. Bernthal noted that
Palestinians with Israeli citizenship played for settlement teams much like
they play for squads in Israel proper.

“You did not mention that the collaboration between me and
clubs from the sector [Arab citizens of Israel] is excellent. You did not
mention the club’s activities against racism and violence, and you did not
mention what concrete action I took to try and promote peace: a game against a
Palestinian club, having two Muslim players on my adult team and more,” Mr.
Bernthal said.

IFA legal advisor Efraim Barak, responding to the report and
contacts between the IFA and Ms. Bashi, employed the fiction upheld by all
international and national sports associations that sports and politics are
separate.

“We make no distinction between any of the Israeli football
teams that are active in the IFA and have players from different nationalities
and backgrounds playing together in comradery and full cooperation, regardless
of where the clubs are located. The same holds true for clubs located in places
whose final status is to be determined,” Mr. Barak wrote in what is an
inherently political statement that aligns the IFA with Israeli government
policy.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

This is
an expanded version of remarks made at Interdisciplinary Net’s Politics, Money
and Sport Places, and Mega Events workshop in Oxford, 13-15 October 2016

This is a
story as much about Saudi Arabia or for that matter about Iran as it is about
international sports associations and how they balance upholding their
principles and values with a realistic assessment of how they can best ensure
compliance by member associations. In fact, this story could just as well be
about whether Qatar against the backdrop of criticism of its labour regime
should be allowed to host the 2022 World Cup or whether collective punishment
that penalizes guilty and innocent athletes alike is the way to go in the case
of Russia that stands accused of endorsing doping.

The issue in
Saudi Arabia and Iran is women’s sporting rights. In Iran, it really is about only
one right; the right to attend male sporting tournaments. Iranian women sports
is otherwise by and large well developed. In Saudi Arabia, it’s about stadium
attendance too, but it’s about much more, it’s about the right to physical
exercise and the right to compete in any sporting discipline. Attitudes of
international sports association towards upholding women’s sporting rights in
Saudi Arabia and Iran constitutes a mixed bag. In fact, until 2012 both
countries got away with restricting women’s rights with no risk to their
ability to host or compete in international tournaments and no risk of being
barred or their reputations being tarnished.

“It’s
humiliating. First you belong to your father and brother, then to your husband
son who can do with you what they want. It is humiliating. How can you say that
women’s rights go against culture? The problem is: who cares about women’s
rights?” says Darya Safai, a 41-year old Iranian student activist-turned
dentist and women’s sports campaigner who was jailed in Iran before fleeing via
Turkey to Belgium.

Ms. Safai,
who travels the world to sporting mega events at which she unfolds a banner
demanding women’s unfettered access to stadiums in Iran, sees her activism
rooted in her first encounters as a child with discrimination of women. In line
with Iranian dress code, her mother forced her at age six on her first day of
school to exchange the clothes she liked for a body enveloping blue mantle and
a head cover. “I realized something wa
wrong when I saw my neighbour’s son going to school in the same clothes he always
wore. Nothing had changed for him. From that moment on, I wanted to be a boy,”
Ms. Safai said.

Ms. Safai
was subsequently admonished by teachers for laughing out loud because that was
improper. “I was afraid in school. I look at pictures from that time and I’m
never smiling because girls aren’t supposed to display their teeth. From age
nine, we were taught that you would go to hell if a man sees you. I was afraid
of the pain of burning in hell. Later my bicycle was taken from me. It was
terrorizing children… At a given moment, the penny dropped. I realized it’s not
my fault. That was my rebellion. I wanted my rights,” she said speaking fluent
Dutch in an Antwerp café.

Ms. Safai
had a taste of those rights in 1997 when thousands of Iranian male and female
soccer fans poured into the streets of Tehran to celebrate Iran’s defeat of
Australia with a last-minute goal in a World Cup qualifier that paved the way
for the Islamic Republic’s joining the 1998 World Cup finals. “It was a day on
which everything that was forbidden became possible. Men and women were on the
streets. The veils were off, they danced and sang together. It was one of the
most beautiful days of my life,” Ms. Safai recalls.

2012 was a
watershed in the struggle for women’s sporting rights in the Middle East in
several ways. It was the year in which world soccer body FIFA and the
International Football Association Board (IFAB) that sets the rules of the game
opened the door to religiously observant Muslim women to play in international
competitions with their hair covered. It was also the year in which West Asian
Football Federation (WAFF) that groups the region’s national associations with
the exception of Israel adopted a resolution that put the right of a women to
compete on par with that of a man. Eleven of the federation’s 13 member
associations, including Iran, voted in favour. Saudi Arabia and Yemen voted
against. The resolution was revolutionary even if it only had symbolic value
because the federation doesn’t have the teeth to enforce it.

2012 was
also the year in which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the first
time threatened the world’s three countries – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei –
that had never sent a woman to an Olympic sporting event with a boycott if
women were not included in their representations in London. Saudi Arabia
avoided a boycott by sending two expatriate athletes. What has evolved since in
both the case of Saudi Arabia and Iran is a cat and mouse game in which
international sports associations effectively have thrown the towel into the
ring in effect allowing the two countries to maintain misogynist policies. It
has also forced human rights groups to rethink how they best can pressure
international sports associations to stand up for universal rights.

To be fair,
despite what I would view as a cave-in, attitudes in international sports
associations have shifted. That is too say they no longer evade the issue even
if they at best following a brief period of taking a stand now only pay lip
service to it. Also to be fair, the results of the associations’ activism is a
mixed bag. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it forced the kingdom to allow women to
compete albeit in only very small numbers – in Rio the number of Saudi women
doubled from two to four – and only in a very limited number of sports that are
mentioned in the Qur’an. In Iran, pressure first appeared to succeed but then
failed in part because associations like the International Volleyball
Federation ultimately backtracked or in the case of the Asian Football
Confederation either refrained from holding Iran to its promises or publicly
endorsed Iranian policies.

One other
thing has also changed. In the days of Jacque Rogge’s stewardship of the IOC,
there was no contact between the committee and human rights groups. Rogge
wanted nothing to do with them. That changed with the rise of Thomas Bach. Bach
met with the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch shortly
after being elected and has maintained that dialogue. Bach also initially
attempted to follow through with the Saudis in the wake of the committee’s
initial success with the London Olympics. The Saudis refusal to send women to
the subsequent Asian Games, their refusal to allow women to compete in anything
but Quranic sports, and their development of the kingdom’s first national
sports plan for men only infuriated Bach. It prompted him to after first
requesting restraint on the part of the human rights groups to ultimately say
to them: Go for it, Saudi Arabia is yours. Yet in saying that, he effectively
dropped the ball. The IOC had no intention of continuously pressuring Saudi
Arabia or continuously wielding the stick of a boycott.

As a result,
pressure by the IOC to force Saudi Arabia to take necessary measures, including
introduction of mandatory sports lessons in girl’s schools, development of an
infrastructure that would foster women’s elite sports, and adoption of policies
to encourage and enable female participation, have lacked the resolve necessary
to produce results that go beyond a nominal quadrennial women’s presence. Human
rights groups have concluded that in the absence of being able to pressure
Saudi Arabia directly, they only have an opportunity every four years to
influence the IOC in the final run-up to an Olympic tournament.

The pattern
is similar in the case of Iran. The International Volleyball Federation
initially declared that it would not grant Iran hosting rights as long as women
were not granted unfettered access to stadia. In response, Iran promised to
allow women to attend international volleyball tournaments in the Islamic
republic. Similarly, Iran promised the Asian Football Confederation, the AFC,
that women would be allowed to attend Asian Cup matches hosted by Iran. In both
cases, Iran never stuck to its promise and at best allowed foreign women to
enter. The US Volleyball Federation on the informal advice of the State
Department decided not to send its woman president to Iran when the US national
team played their even though the vice president of Iran is a woman and Iranian
sports associations have women’s sections that are headed by women. The
international federation earlier this year backed down from its threat of a
boycott declaring that gender segregation in Iran was culturally so deep-seated
that a boycott would not produce results. The federation argued that engagement
held out more promise. The decision flew in the face of the facts. Gender
segregation in volleyball in Iran was only introduced some four or five years
ago.

The same is
not true for soccer where segregation has been a fixture since the 1979 Islamic
revolution. The AFC however went a step further. It not only failed to force
Iran to stick to its promise to allow women to attend Asian matches. When Iran
was upset in January last year at Australian-Iranian women cheering the Iranian
soccer team at the Asian Games in Australia and players mingling with their
Australian fans, AFC secretary general Alex Soosay defended Iran’s right to do
what it wanted within its national borders. As an aside, Soosay was fired six
months later after I published evidence of his attempt to cover up his possible
involvement in corruption. Soosay has since been hired as a consultant by the
AFC.

In the cases
of both Saudi Arabia and Iran, I would argue that a principled stand that
sanctions the two countries makes imminent sense albeit for very different
reasons and that harks back to the notion of balancing adherence to principles
with a realistic assessment of what can be achieved and how it can be achieved.
I would argue that a firm and principled stand in the case of Saudi Arabia has
a chance of success.

The reason
for that optimism is that Saudi Arabia is in flux. Saudi Arabia’s strategy of
letting international oil prices drop to maintain market share and squeeze Iran
has failed. Shale oil has proven to be resilient and Iran in the wake of the
nuclear agreement is on the rise. The failure coupled with geopolitics and the
fallout of the 2011 Arab popular revolts is forcing Saudi Arabia to do what is
long overdue: upgrade its autocracy and diversify its economy. Without
discussing the merits of the Saudi plan formulated in a document called Vision
2030, this entails curbing the raw edges of puritan Islamic rule, bringing more
women into the labour market and offering youth more opportunities not only in
terms of jobs but also with regard to entertainment. Saudi Arabia’s system of
government, a marriage between an autocratic ruling family and a puritan albeit
opportunistic clergy, is under pressure both at home and abroad and inevitably
will have to be renegotiated. At the same time, Saudi Arabia needs increased
foreign investment and needs to polish its tarnished image. One reason why
Saudi Arabia came up with the hair-brained idea of hosting an Olympic
tournament together with Bahrain. Men would compete in Saudi, women in Bahrain.

In short,
Saudi Arabia is vulnerable to pressure. It demonstrated that with its torturous
but ultimate decision to allow women to compete in London in 2012 and in Rio
this year. Exactly the opposite is true for Iran. International pressure is
unlikely to produce results. Iran is embroiled in a power struggle in the wake
of the nuclear agreement and in advance of elections next year. The nuclear
agreement has produced for Iran on multiple levels, but the one area where it
has yet to achieve tangible results is in the pocket of the average Iranian. At
stake in the power struggle are vested interests. Iran is a country ruled by
middle-aged former revolutionaries who need to maintain a façade.

For the
Revolutionary Guards, who play a major controlling role in sports, particularly
soccer, its about defending widespread economic interests. One battlefield in Iran
is cultural, including sports. It’s a battlefield on which its easy for the
conservatives and hardliners to score a goal. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
has to pick his battles if he wants to stand a chance for re-election. Women’s
passive sporting rights, with other words the right to free access to stadiums,
is not one of those battles that is crucial to Rouhani’s prospects. With other
words the domestic cost of fighting that battle outweighs the cost of a refusal
of international sports associations to grant Iran hosting rights. It would be
a different story if the associations would ban Iran from international
competition as long as it restricts women’s rights much as was the case with
Saudi Arabia.

This comes
as no surprise to Ms. Safai, the women’s sport activist. Mr. Rohani was
secretary of the National Security Council when she was arrested in 1999 for
participating in anti-government student protests that were brutally squashed.
Together with Iranian spiritual leader Ali Khamenei, Mr. Rouhani denounced the
protesters as dirty people seeking to undermine security and vowed to “deal
with these opportunists and riotous elements, if they simply dare to show their
faces.”

The fight
for women’s rights is personal for Ms. Safai, a mother of two. “I don’t care
what it costs me. I love Iran, it’s my country. I want people to be equal and
to have equal rights,” she says.

Ms. Safai’s
campaign keeps the issue in the public eye, but is unlikely to spark change in
Iran any time soon. What this means is that the International Volleyball
Federation is probably correct in its conclusion that a boycott of Iran would
be useless in terms of achieving concrete results. It also means that
engagement will not do the trick.

As a result,
the upshot of all of this is that boycotts make sense in both Iran and Saudi
Arabia albeit for very different reasons. In the case of Saudi Arabia, a
boycott has proven to have a chance of success. That is all the truer against
the backdrop of the geopolitical, political and social issues Saudi Arabia has
to deal with. In the case of Iran, its exactly the opposite. What is at stake
is not chances of success, but the integrity of international sports
associations in upholding their own principles as well as universal values in
the absence of any chance of breaking a deadlock and encouraging progress.

A journalist and Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, Dorsey’s blog “(has) become a reference point for those seeking the latest information as well as looking at the broader picture” on Middle East soccer and politics, according to FSF member Alon Raab, who teaches at the University of California Irvine.

The forum’s twenty participants spread out across North and South America, Africa, Europe, and, naturally, the Middle East, engaged in a lively discussion with the author. Dorsey began by describing the origin of the project and a disclaimer that he is neither a player or fan of the game. The book, he stated, is about politics, not soccer. But he immediately qualified this quasi-heretical statement (among fútbologists, at least) by stressing that sports and politics are always linked, though at different levels of intensity depending on the place and time.

Dorsey emphasized the importance of young Egyptian ultras in the overthrow of Mubarak and of stadiums as spaces of mobilization, dissent, and censorship. A particularly interesting thread of the forum was the focus on social media as scholarly sources–“cyber-ethnography–and also as an invaluable space for public discourse.

Prompted by new questions, Dorsey shared his thoughts on gender issues; the limited influence of “Muscular Islam” in its diverse interpretations (from conservative to liberal) on the region’s football culture; racial and ethnic discrimination in the region; and how the failed July 15 coup in Turkey means soccer fans have been caught in the wider web of repression carried out by the Erdogan regime.

Despite the grim status quo for people and football in war-ravaged Syria, Dorsey closed on an optimistic note, arguing that we are at the beginning of a long process of potentially positive change in the Middle East. Time will tell, but what is certain is that the game will continue to serve “as an arena where struggles for political control, protest and resistance, self-respect and gender rights are played out.”

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

An Egyptian businessman with close ties to
general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has submitted a bid for the
broadcasting rights of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in a move
that is widely seen as an effort to polish the image of Egypt, tarnished by
massive abuse of human rights, failing economic policies, and a military coup
that put in 2013 put an end to the country’s first democratic experiment.

The
$600 million bid also challenges the predominance among Arab satellite
broadcasters of BelN, the Qatar-owned sports network that is part of Al Jazeera,
and has bought broadcasting rights across the globe.

Finally, if successful, the bid could help improve Mr.
Al-Sisi’s domestic standing at a time that the president is struggling
economically and being propped up by funding from Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates. Many Egyptians cannot afford BelN’s subscription rates that
range from $7.5 to $54 a month.

Relations between Qatar, a supporters of the Muslim
Brotherhood, and Egypt have been strained ever since Mr. Al-Sisi three years
ago toppled Mohammed Morsi, a Brother and Egypt’s first and only democratically
elected president.

Mr. Morsi was sentenced in June to 25 years in prison for
passing state secrets to Qatar in a case in which several Al Jazeera
journalists were convicted in absentia to either death of long prison terms. Al
Jazeera was taken off the air within hours of the 2013 coup and three of its
journalists were held in prison and sentenced to years in jail before
ultimately being released.

Mr. Abou Hashima sought help at the time, the reports said,
in his high-profile divorce, reportedly involving a $30 million settlement,
from Haifa Wehbe, one of the Arab world’s most prominent singers and actors.

Mr. Abou Hashima’s effort to improve Egypt’s international
image by buying African broadcasting rights builds on Egypt’s past African
soccer glory. Egypt’s national team is the African Cup of Nation’s most crowned
squad, winning the title in the three consecutive years that preceded the 2011
popular revolt that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak.

"We do our best to project Egypt's name in all sectors
in Africa, especially sport," Mr. Abou Hashima said in a Facebook
posting on August 30.

Pro-Sisi deputies linked Mr. Abou Hashima’s bid more
directly to the mass anti-Morsi protests in the summer of 2013 that had been
supported by the military and security forces and paved the way for Mr.
Al-Sisi’s takeover.

"The proposal the Egyptian company presented to buy the
broadcasting rights of African football honours the Egyptian people after the
30 June glorious revolution," Hamdy al-Sisi, a namesake of the president, lawmaker
and member of the lower house’s Youth and Sports Committee, told Al-Monitor.

"Egypt is the main key driver of the Middle East and it
remains the pulse of the Arab world. The fact that an Egyptian company obtains
the broadcasting rights of matches indicates a lot, including Egypt's recovery
from its crisis as it has come back to the African arena," added
Mahmoud al-Sayyed, another lawmaker and committee member.

Proper marketing of the broadcasting rights would project
Egypt despite a violent insurgency in the Sinai as stable, demonstrate public
support for Mr. Al-Sisi, and boost tourism, Mr. Al-Sayyed said.

Seventy-two members of Ultra Ahlawy, one of the militant
soccer support groups that played a key role in the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak
and subsequent resistance to military rule died in Port Said’s existing stadium
in 2012 in a controversial, politically loaded brawl. It was Egypt’s worst ever
sporting incident. Port Said did not figure in the government’s investment plan
that was presented last year to an economic development conference.

Many in Port Said resent the fact that court proceedings
have laid blame for the incident with militant supporters of Al Masri SC, some
of whom have been sentenced to death, and two security officials in the city.
Seven other security officers were acquitted. The defendants have appealed the
verdicts.

Mr. Al-Sisi sought to co-opt Ultras Ahlawy earlier this year
on the fourth anniversary of the incident by offering them to independently
investigate what happened. The ultras turned the offer down, arguing that they
could not simultaneously act as accuser and judge.

Mr. Al-Sisi made his offer as militant soccer fans formed
the backbone of anti-government student protests that were brutally squashed. The
protests were not only against the harsh repression of the Al-Sisi regime but
also against its economic and social policies which failed to create public
sector jobs for graduates and more places for students at universities.

Mr. Al-Sisi’s effort to use sports to his advantage sought
to exploit the fact that physical exercise, including, jogging and biking,
enjoys unprecedented popularity among Egyptian youth. In one event, Mr. Al-Sis
led military academy cadets in 2014 on a well-publicized bicycle ride around
Cairo.

“The young people can’t go out demonstrating, but they can
go out to run,” sports coach Ramy A. Saleh told The
New York Times. “It’s connected with
the withdrawal from public life by young people,” added
political scientist Ezzedine C. Fishere.

“Everyone who had participated in 2011 (in the popular
revolt0 started to move to the private sphere, some took refuge in depression,
some in nihilistic activities and many in fitness — not just fitness, but
taking care of oneself,” Mr. Fishere said.

Sports may for now prove to be a way for Mr. Al-Sisi to
engage with youth who in the absence of post-2011 politics find expression in
physical activity. If history is however any guide, sports could also turn on
him as was evident with soccer fans being the foremost group to resist the
Mubarak regime physically in the years before the president’s downfall.

Mr. Al-Sisi appears to recognize that with Egyptian stadiums
remaining largely closed to the public for much of the years since 2011. That
didn’t stop Ultras Ahlawy from rioting in July during a match against a
Moroccan team. Some 80 ultras were arrested.

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Remarks by James M. Dorsey at the Asian Research Institute
on 30 August 2016

Political transitions are processes, not momentary events.
They can take a quarter of century if not more.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is as much an
expression of a global trend driven by economic, political and geopolitical
uncertainty and security and safety fears that produces lack of confidence in
the system and existing leadership as are Donal Trump, the 2011 Arab popular
revolts; the rise of the far right in Europe; tensions between concepts of
freedom, privacy and security; and the wind in the sails of democratically
elected, illiberal leaders such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Benyamin Netanyahu
in Israel and Narendra Modi in India.

Nonetheless, there are specific reasons why the transition
process has moved forward in Southeast Asia despite the military coup in
Thailand and the corruption and governance issues that Malaysia is confronting
whereas the process in the Middle East is far more torturous, volatile and
violent. Three of those reasons stand out:

n

Southeast Asia has
benefitted from the fact that it does not have the equivalent of Saudi Arabia,
an arch-conservative absolute monarchy with regional hegemonic ambitions whose
ruling family will not shy away from anything to ensure its survival;

Southeast Asia further had
the advantage that it is not wracked by regional rivalries like those between
Saudi Arabia and Iran or Iran and Turkey and is not populated by countries
whose ambition is to dominate others. Equally important is that no country in
Southeast Asia had the kind of revolutionary ambition that Iran, Egypt, Libya
or Algeria had at given times in their more recent history;

Differences between
Southeast Asian nations are not fought on the battlefield and Southeast Asians
do not employ militant and violent proxies to influence events in other
countries. With other words, there is no equivalent in Southeast Asia to
Hezbollah, Hamas or the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units nor is there a pattern
of support by any one Southeast Asian nation for restless ethnic or religious
in another country in the region such as Saudi support for restless Iranian
Arabs in Khuzestan or Baluchis in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province.

Geopolitics aside, there are some fundamental lessons to be
learnt from the Southeast Asian experience:

First and foremost, there is no successful transition
without the participation of at least a significant faction of the military
that sees the preservation of its vested interests in change rather than
maintenance of the status quo. In Myanmar, the military took the lead, in
Indonesia and the Philippines, a faction of the military reached out to civil
society groups. And it was that alliance that pushed the process of toppling an
autocrat forward.

No military or faction of a military in the Middle East and
North Africa saw or sees the preservation of its interests best served by a
transition from autocratic or military rule to a more liberal, more democratic
civilian rule. On the contrary, autocrats and militaries in the Middle East and
North Africa have worked out a number of models to sustain autocratic rule that
gives militaries a vested interest in the status quo.

Protesters in Egypt in 2011 chanted the military and the
people are one when the military refused to step in to crush the revolt. The transition
in Egypt however was initially one from autocratic rule in which the military
and the security forces were the dominant players to outright military rule by
the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. A brief democratic transition was
brutally ended with a military coup that was backed by Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates.

The explanation for the differences in attitude between
Southeast Asian militaries and militaries in the Middle East and North Africa
lies for a large part in differences in the relationship between autocrats and
militaries. It also lies in different approaches to the two regions by
international donors, particularly the United States, towards the militaries
and civil society.

Western donors worked with Southeast Asian militaries on
issues such as civil-military relations and human rights. They also were able
to give relatively unfettered support to civil society groups. The result was
greater differentiated thinking within Southeast Asian militaries and the
existence of a civil society that was able to rise to the occasion. In a study
of civil military relations in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North
Africa, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID))
concluded that there was ample opportunity for serious work on civil military
relations in the Philippines. Despite at times rocky relations with former
President Suharto in Indonesia, the US also had programs on civil military
relations for the Indonesian military.

The study constituted a rare US look at the potential for
similar programs in the Middle East and North Africa. Its conclusion for that
region was radically different. The study said flat out that the Middle East
and North Africa was not ripe for concepts of civil-military relations. The
conclusion was in line with US policy that saw autocracy rather than transition
as the guarantor of regional stability.

As a result, the United States allowed
Middle Eastern and North African autocrats like Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak to decide which civil society groups could receive US support and which
ones could not. Hardly, a recipe for development of a robust and independent
civil society.

The alliance between the military and civil society in
Southeast Asia produced one other key ingredient for relative success: the
ability of the street to better evaluate when best to surrender the protest
site and move from contentious to more conventional politics and the ability to
manage post-revolt expectations.

Civil society was effectively locked out of the transition
process once Mubarak resigned on the 11th of February 2011. Its
power was significantly diminished with the evacuation of Tahrir Square even if
mass protests continued for another nine months with an ever rising number of
casualties. The military coup two years later was made possible of course by
the missteps of Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brother and Egypt’s first and only
democratically elected president.

It was however also made possible by dashed social and economic
expectations that the revolt would produce immediate and tangible social and
economic benefits strengthened by a manipulative military and security service.

None of these Southeast Asian lessons provide quick fixes
for the multiple crises in the Middle East. What it does however demonstrate is
that even if popular revolts are often in and of themselves spontaneous events,
the run-up to watershed protests are as much a process as is the post-revolt
transition. In sum, the Middle East and North Africa has much to learn from the
Southeast Asian experience even if Southeast Asia’s path was in some ways
easier because it did not have to contend with some of the Middle East and
North Africa’s complicating factors.

Remarks by Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario at the Asian Research Institute on 30 August 2016

In November 2015 when we submitted the final manuscript, the
overall tone of the book was upbeat for Southeast Asia. Except for Thailand, the countries in
Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines, seemed
poised to complete their democratic transition, rebuild institutions founded on
the principles of democratic governance, and enshrine the principles and
practices of open participatory systems.
The one bright light in the Middle East/North Africa is Tunisia whose
Quartet for Democracy had just won a Nobel Peace Prize for its role in the
democratic transition.

In the past two months, since the Philippine electorate gave
a whopping mandate to Rodrigo Duterte, some 2000 Filipinos have died, mostly on
allegations of drug use/abuse, none of them having had the opportunity to seek
redress through the judicial system.
Rule of law seems to have been usurped by
executioners-on-motorcycles. He has gone
to war with a female Senator who wants to investigate extrajudicial killings,
as well as the female Supreme Court chief justice with whom he is also in a war
of words over warrantless arrests. He
is threatening to pull out of the UN.

Similarly, In a very recent cabinet reshuffle in Indonesia,
former General Wiranto who “is among senior officers indicted by UN prosecutors
over gross human rights abuses during the 24-year occupation of East Timor” as
quoted in the Straits Times of 27 July 2016,
(http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/indonesia-names-controversial-ex-general-as-security-minister),
was appointed to the sensitive post of security minister. “Activists have called it a step backwards
for human rights,” quoting again from The Straits Times.

This, then, raises the question about Southeast Asia: are we seeing a democratic rollback? In the book’s introduction, we referred to
two authors who asked the same questions.
Erik Paul’s book Obstacles to Democratization concluded that the ASEAN
nation-states are a “passing phenomenon” caught up in superpower contests
mainly between the US and China, and citizens are swallowed up and gobbled up
by the forces of global capitalism, international financial institutions, and
geopolitical players who compete militarily in their struggle for global
hegemony.”

Mely Anthony-Caballero, in her edited book Political Change,
Democratic Transition, and Security in Southeast Asia, echoed the same
disappointment over the failure of democratic consolidation in Southeast Asia
after the euphoria of the first wave of democratization in the 1980s that began
in the Philippines. Several country case
studies in Caballero’s book point towards the entrenchment of patronage
politics, the lack of attitudinal requirements among the citizenry to embrace
democratic ethos, and the preference for stability and material prosperity
rather than the mess and the noise of rambunctious participatory politics.

Thailand remains the foremost example for an authoritarian
resurgence in this century, not once, but twice, when military coups in 2006
and 2014 effectively ended the legitimately-elected governments of Thaksin
Shinawatra and Yingluck Shinawatra respectively.

Surely, these gripes and grievances are not without merit,
but the scenarios are not altogether grim.

Civil society remains a vibrant pro-democracy force in
Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines, where civil society and
public participation have been enshrined in their respective constitutions. A
very active and robust human rights community in Cambodia undertakes a variety
of rights-related campaigns, ranging from land grabs to anti-trafficking. In Myanmar, 180 CSOs signed a petition o
parliament to reject four proposed bills by a Buddhist organization called the
Association for the protection of Race and Religion. Civil society activists
view these bills as potentially “inciting hatred, discrimination, conflict and
tension.”

Malaysia’s Bersih (literally means clean) continues to be at
the forefront of collective mobilization for a variety of social causes despite
the Internal Security Act of 1960. As
Prime Minister Najib Razak fights for regime survival, the wide entanglement
with CSOs in this particular instance is a display of Southeast Asia’s ability
for political engagement, regardless of formal restrictions and limitations.

But the most striking feature of Southeast Asia’s transition
is the decline of mass atrocities, what Alex Bellamy terms “the other Asian
miracle.” It is a region that, in the
last four decades, has enjoyed a more “peaceful present,” leaving behind a
violent past. Unlike the Iraq or Syria, there are no overt conflicts within and
among nation states, nor are there border disputes that would pit nation states
against each other. Sovereignty claims
are, by and large, respected even after the “invasion” of Sabah in 2013 by the
forces of Sultan Jamalul Kiram III, one of the claimants from the Sulu Sultanate
in the southern Philippines to Sabah in Malaysia. According to The Economist, the invasion,
as amphibious assaults go, was “admittedly tame.”

The Greater Mekong Sub region, a predominantly economic sub-regional
program encompassing five Southeast Asian countries, once the backyard of
intense conflict and violence now hosts The East–West Corridor, a massive
infrastructure program that consists of a road, railway, and energy network has
established “connectivity” among the five countries and has stimulated trade
among them. The battlefields of the
1960s and 1970s has been transformed into a vibrant competitive marketplace,
with formal and informal institutions to mediate and facilitate interregional
relationships.

It is a truism today that the so-called “peace dividend” in
Southeast Asia has converted past warriors into entrepreneurs and consumers,
and where current generations engage in the competition for market share rather
than the struggle for military supremacy and territorial conquest.

It is perhaps these features of the other Asian miracle that
constitute the starkest contrast between Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

One primary lesson from this comparative study is that civil
society is indispensable in building the necessary “political constituency for
democracy. New democracies are
beleaguered by old regime forces. Civil
society participation is even more necessary during such period to prevent the
forces of authoritarianism from subverting gains and preserve newly-opened
hence fragile spaces of civic life.
Newly-installed democratic regimes, on the other hand, should be even
more reliant on their partnership with civil society organizations during these
precarious transition periods.

And then a second valuable lesson. In the morning-after situation when the
protest sites have been emptied, the activists need to heed the call of the
“politics of the boardroom” where several hundred decision-makers rather than
millions of street protesters undertake the tasks of creating, allocating, and
distributing public goods and services.
These require joining the executive branch of the government
particularly its messy tangle of bureaucratic offices and agencies. Hold-overs from the old regime are bound to
interact with the new appointees.

The ability to seek common ground and to prevent bureaucracy
from being held hostage by competing forces so that ordinary citizens can rely
on continuous and uninterrupted services is a task that requires different
leadership skills. In addition, new
entrants need to learn very quickly the mechanics of managing large
organizations, steering them towards the accomplishment of concrete goals, and
marshalling the human and other material resources to fulfil socio-economic
objectives.

No matter the political or ideological colour, or one’s
confessional affiliation, garbage needs to be collected, revenues raised, water
and electricity services provided.
Former activists in Indonesia and the Philippines have joined and
pursued long-term careers in governments.
They run and manage ministries and public commissions on national
budgets, education, anti-poverty and human rights; they attend legislative
hearings and negotiate with donors; they create committees to decide on
projects; and they work with the media and academics to ensure that the message
of government services reaches the public.
The same is happening in Myanmar today. Joining government is not a straightforward
process. The path of transition is
littered with uneasy compromises.

Professor Randy David at the University of the Philippines
who was one of the original “people power warriors” in 1986, wrote an op-ed in the
Philippine Daily Inquirer on 28 August.
In Ulaanbaatar he exchanged views among fellow activists and
intellectuals on democratic transitions.
He wrote of his own pessimism regarding the Philippines before he left
for Ulaanbaatar. But while there, in
dialogue with fellow people power activists from Fiji, Nepal, Mongolia, and
Myanmar, he wrote:

“The Ulaanbaatar forum left me with more questions than
answers. But I came away from the
discussions feeling renewed and hopeful.
For once I understood what the sociologist Niklas Luhmann meant when he
referred to democracy as “an evolutionary achievement of society.” A nation must grow into democracy. Unlike us Filipinos, the Mongolians who
spent centuries defending their land against their powerful neighbours know
only too well how long it will take them still to complete their own democratic
transition.”

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile